We are aware that this recipe may not be helpful unless you have a couple of apple trees or access to a friendly neighbor. We still wanted to share, because the result was delicious and exciting to discover. Before our trees were producing, Nana and Pa would make an annual trip to the orchard east of Idalou, TX. Even though we’ve been processing apples for years, we’ve never made applesauce. As we were wrapping up this year, and we were about to take our 5-gallon bucket of peelings and cores to the animals, Nana had an idea – why don’t we use these scraps to make apple juice and jelly. Never one to back down from a challenge and extra work, Aunt Alisa asked Nana what she could do to help. As the cooked apple scraps came out of the food strainer, Nana noticed that it looked like applesauce, so she tasted it and decided to add a little sugar to make our “accidental” applesauce.
Ingredients
- 2 gallons of apple peeling and cores
- water
- ½ cup of sugar (or more)
Instructions
- Fill large canning pot with about an inch of water then pour in about 2 gallons of peeling and core scraps.
- Heat the pot to medium heat, stirring periodically for about 2 hours or until the peeling and core are kind of a mush. (It will kind of look like applesauce full of peeling and cores.)
- Let the mixture cool enough to prevent burning yourself.
- Put the mixture through a fruit and vegetable strainer to remove the seed, core, and peeling.
- As it comes out of the strainer, it will look just like applesauce.
- Add sugar in ½ cup increments until you reach desired sweetness.
- We decided to can our new discovery for year-round enjoyment.
BTW When Nana was perusing the internet the following day, she realized that our “discovery” was not really a discovery to anyone but us. Oh well, we are still excited to share what we learned. Thank you for indulging us.
